[quote=“superking”]
No, it was directed towards the original poster. Sorry for my lack of clarity.
Chin, Long[/quote]
That’s ok. I won’t speak for him, but I wonder if I can address my impression of what he’s saying.
There’s a difference between being a teacher and being a part of a marketing plan. I think all teachers - ESPECIALLY if they’re in a smaller school - are both to some degree. The balance just varies from school to school.
Back in America as a teacher, my main goal was to ALWAYS be a teacher during the class period when children were there. My job, as I saw it, was to help the children learn and develop. Here, I realize that’s often secondary…if existant at all.
Some might want kids to just be able to parrot phrases with no clue what they mean, but sound impressive to those that don’t know better.
Some might want kids that can sing songs, but have no clue how to talk to a foreigner. Unless, of course, he happens to be there on the bus singing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.”
And, yes, there are quite a few that actually want you to teach English. So I’m not denying that also.
But the poster raises an interesting point. We might look at it and say, “they want him to stand so people walking outside can see. What’s the big deal?” The big deal in this case is not being on the children’s level. Are we trying to teach children or are we trying to get people to see the white guy in the window? I don’t mean this insultingly, but it seems to be a difference between Taiwan standards vs. Western standards. At the schools I worked at in the US, people brought their children back because they got what they wanted…a good education and a place for their children to develop socially. Here, the standard often seems to be how many checks they can put on the “I have a better school for my kid than you do” pamphlet. The foreign teacher, of course, being at the top of that list.
A solution for the schools to resolve both the marketing issue and the teaching issue? Mirrors. I don’t know what their wall situation is like, but if people look in and see a foreigner through the mirror that is down on the child’s level and teaching that way, that would be WAY more impressive than someone standing over them just so he could be seen from the outside.
Matt